roast vege quinoa salad
This is a very easy, quick and delicious salad. A little bit the flavour profile of a ratatouille but without the tomato and instead of being stewy, the veges are caramellised on the outside and goey on the inside.
There are only a couple of tricks to it:
- Roast in a hot oven to avoid stewing the veges
- use a large tray (or two) so all the veges are in one layer (see above)
- use plenty of olive oil and season well
- use way less water to cook the quinoa than typically instructed on the quinoa box
It’s good warm but I think it’s better the next day served at room temp after a night of mingling in the fridge. This recipe is courtesy of our daughter’s godmother. Thanks Laura!
- 1 large or a couple of medium sized onions
- 1 large courgette
- 1 eggplant
- 2 bell peppers
- 100ml quinoa
- olive oil
- salt and black pepper
- some form of acid (lemon or vinegar – I’d stare clear of sweeter vinegars personally though) – you can leave this out at a pinch too
Optionally you can also add:
- fresh herbs
- crumbled feta (though I’d tone down the salt on the veges a bit if using feta)
- Preheat your oven to 225C.
- Wash and slice all the veges into bite sized chunks (inch cubed about, but it’s not super important).
- Lay the veges out onto one (or more) baking trays so that they’re in one layer.
- Generously coat the veges in oil and season well with salt and freshly milled black pepper.
- Roast for about 30mins or until they veges have caramellised. At this point they should be pretty well cooked through, but sometimes the courgettes in particular still have a little bite to them which I personally don’t mind.
- Remove from the oven and cook the quinoa.
- Most instructions say cook quinoa with 2 pars of water to one part of quinoa. That’s too porridgey for my taste. Better is 1-to-1 in my opinion. So follow the packet instructions but use 100ml of quinoa and 100ml of water (or stock).
- Mix the veges and quinoa and allow to cool.